


Hand in mine, into your icy blues

by Fabulae



Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Demolition Lovers, Depression, Drinking, Drugs, Hurt Tony Stark, Post Civil War, Self Harm, all the sadness, basically a black hole of, incredibly so, my chemical romance - Freeform, not coping with death, sickeningly poetic, there is no happy ending, there may be tears
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-04
Updated: 2016-04-04
Packaged: 2018-05-31 06:38:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6459802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fabulae/pseuds/Fabulae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post Civil War. Tony has lost too much, and now he is losing himself as well. </p><p>*There are very graphic depictions of depression, self harm, self deprecation, self hate. Please don't read if this poses as a trigger for you*.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hand in mine, into your icy blues

**Author's Note:**

> This is angst. Angst, bucketfuls of angst in many shades of angst, and then a side of angst. Basically, that.
> 
> I wrote it many years ago, I wrote it listening to this beautiful, heartbreaking song called Demolition Lovers, by my dearest MCR. I have always been a bit emo, then they came and sung of angst, and of loss, and there was no return from there.  
> As I live between two extremes, laughter and pain, sadness and light, I thought this story would act as a nice counterweight against the fluffiness of my other works.

**…Hand in mine, into your icy blues.**

 

He’s not yours,

Accept that.

He has a life now, he is..and you, come on, look at yourself. What do you have have? The tenth glass of scotch in your icy hands.

He lowered his gaze, the writing on the bottle was quite interesting, he tried to focus to be able to read it but the only thing he managed to do was shedding a tear and almost fainting. Swearing, he reclined his head on the leather couch and refilled his glass.

1, 2, 3…10. Was there any difference anyway?

Probably, not.

The hours of deadly boredom killed by alcohol, as the thousands coffee cups consumed, or the forgotten projects, or the estranged friends. He was hitting rock bottom and he was going to do it in great style.

Steve was in front of him, speaking quietly. Touching Bucky’s arm with a brush of fingers. Smiling at Nat. And then he looked at him. His contempt burning a hole, burning paper like a flame.

Don’t do this, please. A silence plea for mercy. Don’t throw your hate at me. My own will suffice.

Another glass. Some vodka now. And the circle started again.

Would it ever end? Would he ever stop circling, avoiding the issue, would he forget what failure of a person he had become?

Possibly, not. He only wanted to drop that glass, and take him in his arms, without him pushing him away in disgust. He wanted too many things, but the only thing he kept doing was drinking.

Congratulations, Tony. You are winning at life.

 

**…I'm trying, I'm trying**

Steve, I love you, he muttered.

“You’re drunk, Tony” a familiar voice was covering him with a blanket. “Go away, Rhodey.”

“You’re drinking again, aren’t you?” he shook his head and keep talking but he wasn’t listening anymore.

Dum, dum, dum.

He could only hear the sound of his heart. 

It was not beating as it should have, the rhythm was off. Even the heart was trying to tell him something, but he was deaf and blind. He didn’t want to hear it and he was aware of what he was doing.

A masochist, a damned bastard.

He didn’t have anymore words for himself at the moment.

He touched his cheek, the skin was swollen and bruised, the vapors of alcohol were making it red and puffy. 

Hair was falling in strands.

He stood up, push Rhodey aside. 

He took a hammer.

Boom.

On the floor, pieces of a armour. Broken twinges of metal, like little electric wires that couldn’t connect to electricity again..

And he wasn’t done. He was destroying without even looking, every piece was a piece of Tony that left. A piece of what he was and he didn’t know if he would ever find again. He found another way to hide, not behind a mask anymore, being everything I was not. 

He liked that.

 

**…To let you know just how much you mean to me**

 

“We need to assemble, Tony” the voice made him jump. 

He was looking into the shiny plate of his suit, and saw a stranger with disheveled hair, glassy eyes; the skin ashen and swollen.

Whoa, was he? What did he want with him?

He had to go, to fight, to perform, there will be friends and team members that wanted him to something he couldn’t be. They wanted the hero, the genius.

But how could he fight with them when even his heart and his brain had stopped singing along to his rhythm.

Every beat was a broken symphony, every pulse of the reactor felt hollow, stranger, foreign. That same beat that fueled his fighting, his courage, was not there anymore. Nothing made much sense. And he was his actions, he was his courage.

Two plus two, Tony.

If you’re not wearing the suit anymore, if you are not fighting, what’s left of you? Who are you? Nothing.

Sad, but true.

But he jumped on the platform anyway, and the suit start connecting to his body. He tried. He fucking hell he tried. But the movements felt wrong, disjointed, the suit felt too much, oppressing. Once freedom, now prison. Now the bearer of hollow memories. He listened to his broken heart and it was distracting. 

And the faces of those around around him.

Full of light, of expectations, of hope. Like he was special, like he was more than a reject, a failure, a killer. “Why are you looking at me like that? Why you can and he couldn’t?” he said to himself

Why do you still love me and he can’t?

He kept asking himself that. He knew well the answer would never find its way to him.

He took a gulp of his drink, the suit still not covering his face.

Click. The suit closed on him. He felt so heavy, he felt so wrong. 

He stumbled and fell on the floor.

Why were all the people looking at him? He wanted to sleep, wanted to stay in the floor. 

He tried to stand up again, but nothing made sense. He didn’t want to be there. He wanted to drink, wanted to snort coke. He wanted to explode, to self destruct.

Same old story. Will is power. Funny joke.

 

**…As days fade, and nights grow**

 

“Steve”.

Even in sleep his name tormented him. If one could call that sleep. It was more closing his eyes and drown in the stench of alcohol that enveloped him, crying himself to sleep telling himself how shitty he was, what a horrible human he had become.

And the nights grew darker and longer, he remember those because, voracious, hungry: they stole what was left of him. The days went in a blur, instead, few hours of orange light lived, survived, in a drowsiness, a drunk drowsiness; work forgotten, friends forbade entry.Every night every excuse was good to ask for alcohol, more drugs. There was always someone willing to keep company with a billionaire. There was always someone that would make him forget the looks of regret and shame on his friends’ faces, on his face; always somebody that wouldn't tell him what to do, or to ask for help.

He was full of nothing. Well, but alcohol and drugs.

The fumes of expensive scotch crowded his head; the memories, the words, the emotions, everything was wet with the golden shades of bourbon. 

Another, he’d ask the barman, in a place he already forgotten the name of. 

Another look of misery. Another face that was judging him handing him a glass of oblivion.

He drank it.

He moved outside.

And he felt that was the last time. He may have crossed the road to no return.

 

**…And we go cold**

 

Cold.

He was cold.

He was trembling.

Thump, thump.

Please beat, please work. Fuck.

 

**…Until the end, until this pool of blood**

 

“Tony. Wake up, Tony!”

A voice from far away was calling his name.

He blinked his eyes open.

Red, there was red everywhere. Red flowers, wet, around him, stuck to his cold body.

Blood, that was his blood.

“Pepper?”

A cold compress on his forehead, hands that were keeping him still. An ambulance. And then nothing... **Like a bed of roses there's a dozen reasons in this gun**

 

 

“You need to look inside yourself, Tony. You need to find the reason to go on. But I can’t give it to you”

Around him white walls, heat. A smell of seas, of wind, of salt.

Clean sheets, a clean bed, white.

Stop with the bullshit, he wanted to say. I didn’t have reasons, I didn’t have strength, I was nothing. 

I need a drink, I need out of here, he said.

But he stayed still, and listened.

The doctor told him he was in a bad shape, his life on the brink of nothingness. And Steve was dead and he cried. She told him he was projecting, he was seeing Steve, hoping he just left to be happy with someone else that wasn’t him. He listened to the fact his heart was not working, his technology, like everything else, was failing him. 

But he didn’t close like a hedgehog this time, he absorbed everything like a sponge. He did for this warm hands that had held a compress to his forehead, for those strong hands that had held him, for the kind voices that had tried to help.

His personal anchor to life.

And he stopped. Stopped drinking. Stopped trying to obliterate his life.

The serum of oblivion now smelt like death, and he didn’t want that smell around him.

And, suddenly, he remembered. He remembered of calculations, of projects, of ideas. Of that genius that had always accompanied him.

Everything was coming back to him.

The smell of the city he grew up in.

The laughter of his friends.

The smell of metal and the colour of brave. Red and gold.

The red and the gold symbol of something he thought he couldn’t be anymore.

 

And then, after a long time, his vision was clear and his heart, sung for him. Sang a litany of pain and goodbyes. Goodbye to someone that had been his everything. Goodbye to his old self. 

 

But the litany was in tune and that had to be enough, for now.


End file.
